4th Class Completed!

I'm done! I'M DONE! I'M DONE, I'M DONE, I'M DONE! The "study" part of my study abroad is over!!!! My group and I gave our presentation yesterday, and we're turning in our paper today for our logistics class. My 4th and FINAL study abroad class has now been completed :)

A bunch of us went out last night to celebrate. We went to Pyro for pizza and Tsingtao, and then we went to Tango for some karaoke. We had our own private karaoke room that had comfortable leather couches, a bar and stools, and a big plasma screen TV for the karaoke. We had four microphones in the room, and some of my songs to sing were "Low" by Flo Rida, "My Humps" and "Glamorous" by Fergie, "Stronger" by Kanye West, and "Lean on Me". We had free juice and snacks all night. Some of our snacks included fried pastries filled with red bean paste, deep fried pumpkin cakes, dumplings, Chinese sushi (no raw meat),  and some custard filled pastries. 

This morning, we went back to the classroom for the last time. Professor Zhou gave a brief wrap up of the program, and we all filled out some course surveys. At the end of the meeting, we watched a thirty minute slideshow video of pictures from the program. David Schwartz put it together, and he used over 500 photos! It was so fun to see pictures from Singapore and Thailand. That seems like AGES ago!

After the meeting, we went to the #1 Peking Duck restaurant in Beijing for our farewell lunch. It was a very fancy "Lazy Susan meal", consisting of many many courses. Naturally, my favorite course was the Peking Duck. The cook carved the roasted duck right next to our table and served us the fresh meat. You roll the duck meat into a tortilla with lettuce, cucumber slices, and a bean curd paste (which doesn't sound appetizing, but it's really good I promise!). 

Now, I am back in my room putting the final touches on our paper before I submit it to Professor Tsui. Then I am going to start packing! Ah almost time to go home!

Olympic Preparations

Beijing has transformed.

It is night and day how Beijing is different from the Beijing when I arrived 5 weeks ago. Olympic preparations have increased as of last Sunday the 20th, and Beijing is becoming more beautiful everyday. Olympic banners line the campus, the streets, and the highways. There are potted flowers all along the sidewalks and medians. There are new road signs posted through the city that point toward Olympic attractions. The signs have English on them! There's even a sign for the Tsinghua Swimming Pool. I have no idea why, seeing as it's closed.

The new subway lines are FINALLY open!! ...well almost. The new line 5 has been open since I arrived in Beijing. It runs north to south, ending at the Temple of Heaven. Line 10 opened on the 20th, which runs east to west, and I LOVE taking it. The line goes near the venues, and it is also a much easier way to get to the Silk Market because you can avoid the nasty transfer at Xizhimen that makes you walk nearly a half a mile up a bunch of stairs. The sad part is that Line 8 is not open yet! This is the Olympic Line that takes you to the Olympic Green, the Olympic Sports Center, the Olympic Village, the Bird's Nest, and the Water Cube. I'm sure it's done being built, they just haven't opened it to the public yet. Anyway, the new subways are beautiful. They have brand new trains with new seats and handrails, air conditioning, and plenty of space because not many people are using the new lines yet. The new trains even have map the light up to show the trains progress, just like in Hong Kong! The new trains also have TVs that are currently playing instructional videos about each Olympic sport. For example, the gymnastic videos explain what the gymnists wear, how high the pommel horse is off the ground, how gymnastics is scored, etc. At least, that is what I can gather from the Chinese and animations. I think it's neat how the government is teaching the Chinese about the Olympics by playing movies on the subways. Oh, and all of the subways and trains have English recordings that follow the announcements made in Chinese! I actually know when the train is coming and which station we are approaching now. That would've been helpful about a month ago. 

Also, the new Olympic bus lines are now open too which transport people around the Olympic Green, which is made up of the Olympic Park and 10 venues, including the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. Oh and the construction by the Wudaoku subway station (the one closest to campus) is finished. They were putting in bike paths, sidewalks for pedestrians, and a bike parking area. It's not controlled chaos, instead of just chaos :)

The roads are less crowded too! As of the 20th, Beijing has been regulating the amount of cars on the roads. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, only cars with license plates ending with an odd number can drive on the roads. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, only even-numbered cars can drive on the road. Taxis and buses can drive on all days, and I'm not sure which cars are allowed to drive on Sundays. The cool thing is that the Chinese people are abiding by this rule! It's fun to ride down the street and only see odd numbered license plates. 

This system has definitely cleared up the roads. It's not so scary riding my bike anymore or crossing intersections because there are not as many cars! The new system also benefits the taxi drivers because it keeps the fake taxis off the roads every other day. There are even lanes on the roads that are designated just for Olympic vehicles, similar to the HOV lanes in Atlanta. I'm not sure what constitutes an "Olympic vehicle", but the lanes stay empty most of the time, not even the taxis are allowed to use them. There are really pretty Olympic rings painted in the lanes too. 

This car regulation system is working so well at loosening up the traffic that I will not be surprised if the Chinese government tries to continue this rule after the Olympics. It's had some great results, but there is no way that this kind of solution would work in Atlanta. Compared to Beijing, Atlanta's infrastructure and underdeveloped (or underutilized?) public transportation system would not be able to get people where they need to be. One day those civil engineers from Tech will figure something out :)

There are also officials throughout the city that are teaching the Chinese to be polite. Before Sunday the 20th, on the 11th of every month, Beijing instated "Queueing Day" where the Chinese people would practice courteous behavior on the subways and buses. Since the 20th, there have been guards wearing orange at all of the subway stations and bus stops. They have flags that they wave around too. At the subway station, each guard stands at a door of the train and makes sure the people line up away from the door, instead of standing in a big mob with their noses up against the doors. The guards make sure everyone has room to get off, and then they let the other people board the train. The same process occurs at the bus stops. 

There has also been an EXPLOSION of Olympic volunteers. They are everywhere! They were all given the same outfits to wear- a bright blue and white Olympic polo, a gray Olympic hat, a yellow Olympic fanny pack, gray and yellow tennis shoes, and gray Olympic zip-off-at-the-knee pants. These volunteers are stationed throughout the entire city and in all of the subway stations to help tourists find their way. One of the guys in our program asking for directions to the Summer Palace, and he said they were incredibly eager and excited to help him. I wish they would've been around when we arrived a month ago. I have no need for them now, but it's still fun seeing them throughout the city. Their uniforms are so bright and pretty, and they are always so happy. They all seem very proud to be a volunteer. One of my group members for my Logistics class is actually a volunteer at the Water Cube!

As far as pollution goes, there has not been much of a difference. Last week there were four days straight of blue skies, but it's been all cloudy and gray since then. I hope I see one more blue sky this week before I go home. All of my pictures of the city still have a gray haze in the background. Also, one bummer about the Olympics is that they are closing down a lot of clubs around the city... Mix, Vics, Propaganda, Kro's Nest, basically our favorite spots, are all closed :(

As far as this weekend goes, my classmates and I went too see an acrobatics show on Thursday night at the Chaoyang Theater. It was INCREDIBLE! I got to see contortionist that pulled their feet back up over their heads to the front of their faces. They were literally sitting on their heads. Their backs were so flexible! It hurt my back just watching theirs bend! It was so awesome! There were also two guys that ran around in a wheel, and there was a bike act where they put 12 girls on one bike! It was awesome.

On Friday morning, I went back to the Great Wall with Hannah, Gabby, and Adrienne. We went to the Juyongguan section, which was about an hour outside of Beijing. Much closer to campus than the previous Simatai section. The Juyongguan section has been renovated and reconstructed, so it looked really nice. Instead of doing lots of hiking like at Simatai, we spent a few hours taking tons of pictures. We got to there early in the morning, so we had the whole wall to ourselves! After an hour or so, lots of tour groups showed up, and the wall became just PACKED with people. Most of the tour groups were middle school aged kids, and they would come up to us and try to practice their English. We heard plenty of choruses of "Will you take a picture with us please?". It became more and more difficult to get good photos, so we headed back to Beijing. I had a great time. I would've liked to go to what they call a "wild" section of the Great Wall that is not touristy, and it's crumbly and overgrown and dangerous, but the Juyongguan section was still nice. If I ever go back to Beijing, I will definitely spend an entire day hiking across a wild section of the Wall. 

After the Great Wall Part 2, I went to the Olympic Flagship Store with Kristi, Gabby, and Sara. The flagship store is the biggest store for official Olympic merchandise. The place was crazy! It was so crowded and there was so much merchandise it took us hours to look through it all. My favorite items were the 5 foot tall stuffed Fuwa mascots and the 4 GB Olympic flash drives. Haha so clever. Outside of the store, it was like Beijing 2008 explosion. The street was jam packed with people, and there were huge colorful Olympic banners covering the buildings that lined the street. There were three huge Olympic stores just along this one half mile stretch of road! Can you believe that I still couldn't find the one item I was looking for that is sold out at the Tsinighua Olympic store? Yep. True story. Out of all these stores, I still couldn't find the one item that I wanted: a set of five drinking glasses that has each of the Fuwa on them. I even looked on the online store, and they were sold out too. 

On Saturday, Caroline, Kristi, and I went to the Olympic Green!!! We took the new subway line 10 and tried to take line 8 directly to the Green, but it was still closed. So we walked a good mile or two with the hopes of getting as close as possible to the Water Cube and the Bird's Nest. On our way, we passed lots of guards and lots of fencing. The ENTIRE park and venues are all still blocked off. I guess it makes sense to protect the venues, but I don't understand why the park is still closed. We passed by lines and lines of people waiting to pick up their tickets, the International Broadcasting Center (IBC), the Olympic Sports Center Stadium (soccer finals and the Modern Pentathlon), and a military zone that had surface to air missile launchers. Yikes. 

Eventually we could see the Bird's Nest, and we went up on a bridge crowded with people to try to get a better view. There was also a news crew on the bridge doing a live broadcast. Fun! After taking pictures of the Nest, we saw the Water Cube!! This is where Onur and Kathleen will compete!!!! How exciting! The Water Cube actually looks blue during the day time, and apparently it lights up really nicely at night too! There was a big parking lot by the Cube that we could enter, and this is where we took a lot of our pictures. I wanted to actually touch the building, but of course we couldn't. It was so hot outside that we just wanted to go jump in the pool. How incredible would that have been! I would have given an arm and a leg to go inside! After visiting the Cube, we tried to follow the signs and my map to the Olympic Village, but we could not find it. The heat eventually got the best of us, and we took a taxi back to Wudaoku where we bought juice and water at the 711 and then went to our favorite BBQ chicken place for lunch.

My activities on Sunday included homework and studying, and I took one trip to the Silk Market to get three business shirts tailored. Today we took our first and only exam for our Logistics class. We had a homework assignment due today, and one is due tomorrow. On Wednesday we have a project presentation and a paper due, and then my summer study abroad is complete! AH! We are going out for pizza on Wednesday night to celebrate, and we have a class farewell dinner of traditional Peking/Beijing Duck planned for Thursday. On Friday, Caroline and I plan on meeting up with Onur who arrives in Beijing on Wednesday to swim in the Olympics!

Things That Make Me Happy

1. A really good dinner with friends.

We went out to a local chicken wings restaurant for Scott Bruce's 21st birthday. There were 23 of us total, and we got a private room in the back of the restaurant. We ate over 1000 rumbles worth of the best chicken I have tasted in China! Honey wings, normal spicy wings, and abnormally spicy wings. The wings were served two at a time on a skewer. Usually I do not like spicy foods (I can't even handle the spicy hot pot!), but the spices they used on the chicken wings were TASTY! I ended up eating everybody's abnormally spicy wings because they didn't like them, but I loved them! We were also served spicy lamb on a skewer, which I liked because they used the same spices as the chicken, and the lamb had no bones.  We also ate soy beans, tomato slices topped with sugar, apples and pears covered in a sweet fruit salad sauce, and a round pumpkin pastry drizzled in condensed milk (my favorite!). We also shared a vanilla birthday cake with chocolate frosting, and it was shaped like a basketball, just for Scott :)

2. Swimming

Ever since we found the pool, Caroline and I have gone there every single day possible. Unlike Singapore, the water is pleasantly chilly, so it's much more refreshing to swim in the afternoon in China. The water keeps getting clearer everyday we swim. I'm not sure why,  but it's far from the murkiness it was when we started swimming there last week. The good news is that I can see in front of me, the bad news is I can see how dirty the bottom of the pool is, haha. Unfortunately, our class gets out at 4, and the pool closes at 5, so it gives us about 45 minutes of swimming. I like to see how much I can swim in that 45 minutes. It hurts, but I like that I'm getting back into some kind of shape. I'm no where near where I was when I left Atlanta, but just getting the feel of the water back is a start.

3. Being Ian Crocker's friend on Facebook. YUM.

4. A shower.

At the end of a long day in class, at the pool, at the weight room, biking through the dusty streets, I love when I turn on the shower and it actually works and has good water pressure. So incredible. Showers in Beijing are much different than showers in Singapore. In Singapore, showers were a way of escaping the heat and humidity. In China, showers are a way of escaping the dirt, haha.

5. Hearing from friends and family back home.

Thank you Facebook message threads, e-mails, blogs, Skype, and AIM.

6. Finishing a homework assignment in less than an hour. BALLIN!

7. Apple bottom jeans and boots with the fur.

8. The Great Wall of China.

9. The Olympic Fuwa mascots, especially JingJing the Panda!

10. Music that gets me through the day.

Currently, Chris Brown, Casting Crowns, and Colbie Caillat (wow that's a lot of C's! I promise I did not plan that).

11. Marking my weeks by my malaria medicine.

12. Being a baller in China, duh.

13. Using the Chinese Language.

When I recognize Chinese characters, such as "middle", "entrance", "exit", and "people".

When I hail a taxi all by myself and tell the driver where I want to go in Chinese, and he understands me and takes me there :) So exciting!

When I check into my dorm complex and tell them my room number in Chinese, and they understand :) 

14. The sun, chocolate, and hugs :)

Inner Mongolia!

AHHHH I just had the best weekend in Inner Mongolia!!!!!! Vast stretches of grasslands, fluffy white clouds on the brightest blue sky, sunsets, sunrises, endless desert sands, and experiencing pure freedom :)

I left Beijing on Thursday night with Caroline, Hannah, Adrienne, Melissa, Kristi, Jen, Gabby, Sara, Chris, David, Randy, Thomas, and Andrew. We had arranged a four night group tour of Inner Mongolia!

We got picked up from campus by Daniel, the owner of the tour company. We all took an overnight train to Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia. Since we signed up for the tour a bit late, Daniel could not get us tickets on a soft sleeper Z-Train like the one we had taken to Shanghai. Instead, we were spread across one of the cars in a hard sleeper K-Train, but it was still lots of fun! We were joking around about how funny it would be if we were taking an M-Train (which is the term that refers to management majors at Georgia Tech). There were no private compartments on the train. Instead, there were just isles and isles of beds stacked three high! Most of our tickets were for the middle and top beds, and I slept on one of the top beds.

When we arrived in Hohhot, our tour guide Susan met us outside the train on the platform. Susan is 24-years-old, and she grew up in Mongolia. She speaks four languages and kept apologizing that her English was very poor. It wasn't bad at all, and she ended up being an awesome and fun tour guide for our group. She even had a green flag that she held up for us to keep the group together. Haha it was awesome! I've decided that if you live in Inner Mongolia, you are either a farmer or involved in the tourism industry by working as a tour guide, tour bus driver, or at a tourist location.

We had breakfast in the city, and thus began our "Lazy Susan meals". Every meal we ate in Inner Mongolia the entire weekend was Lazy Susan style. We sat at round tables with a turn table (called a Lazy Susan) in the middle. Twelve dishes were served at every meal, and we shared them by rotating the Lazy Susan. For breakfast, we had rice with green bell peppers and chicken, hard boiled eggs, some watermelon, and a variety of different looking bread rolls that all ended up tasting like dough. There were even some rolls that looked like they had chocolate and cinnamon in them, but it ended up being red bean paste. It was interesting. Our dishes at lunch and dinner were pretty similar. Usually we had white rice, a spicy chicken dish, a whole fish (not filleted), steamed bok choy, egg drop soup, bread dough balls, tasty lamb mutton, cabbage, and watermelon.

At every meal, we were either served hot green tea or traditional Mongolian milk tea. Right out of the tea pot, the milk tea tasted very watery and somewhat salty. However, they always served a plethora of additions for the tea, such as sugar, goat cheese, and corn meal. You're supposed to put everything into the tea and eat it with a spoon. It actually tasted really good! It was kind of like eating warm cereal, and it became my comfort food for the weekend :)

After our breakfast in Hohhot, we took a three hour bus ride to the Gegentala Grassland in the Aobao hills. During the ride, Susan asked each of us to go to the front of the bus and talk about ourselves into the microphone. We ended up asking each other crazy questions, like What is your favorite smell?, and Andrew sang "My Girl" into the mic. The scenery along the ride was absolutely gorgeous, but it was nothing compared where we were staying for the night- gentle rolling hills, covered with the greenest grass against a clear blue sky with the fluffiest white clouds, ahhh so picturesque. Even the weather was incredible! It wasn't humid at all! In fact, the air was dry and quite cool, but the sun kept us warm. It was the perfect temperature the whole day. Also, there are no bugs in Inner Mongolia! There are these awesome flying grasshoppers that make cracking noises when they snap their wings together, but there are no biting insects!

We spent the day riding horses across the grasslands! The horses were smaller than I expected, and it was quite funny to see all of us tall Americans on them! I rode on a white horse with black spots that looked like a Dalmatian's coat. We rode to the top of a hill to see a monument the Mongolians use for prayer. Then we rode out to visit a traditional Mongolian family at their farm. They live in dwellings called yurts. Yurts are circular tepees with a hard clay floor covered with rugs and a wooden frame draped with canvas. There was a circular opening in the roof for ventilation that could be closed when it rained. We sat inside the yurt and were served milk tea and deep fried bread sticks for dipping. Yum! An interesting thing to note, the Mongolian woman served tea to the boys first! Quite patriarchal if I do say so myself.

After visiting the family, we rode back to camp. During the entire ride, the guides kept signaling to us to keep our horses at a walk, hardly letting us even trot. I was so anxious to just break away and gallop across the open grasslands. I was getting disappointed as we neared the camp, but then to my excitement, our guide took off and left us in the middle of the fields. Ah I was so excited! I kicked my horse into a full gallop and went flying across the grasslands!!! I was such an amazing feeling- wide open grasslands, the endless blue sky, the wind blowing by, ah I wish I could've let go of the reins and just opened my arms toward the sky! How incredible!

After the amazing horse ride, we watched a Mongolian rodeo that featured horse racing around a track, Mongolian wrestling, and acrobatics on horseback! People were doing handstands on a galloping horse! They were also hanging off the side of the saddle, carrying another rider on their shoulders, making a human pyramid, it was awesome! After the rodeo, me, Hannah, and Caroline went out into the fields to take some pictures with the grasslands. Then, we ate a Lazy Susan dinner and afterward, all of us went back out into the grasslands to watch the sunset! It was incredible! Such vivid colors against such a big sky! I took so many pictures, and looking back at them now still takes my breath away! Did I really see that in real life??

When the sun finally set behind the hills, we went to a bonfire where we watched some performances with Mongolian dancing and singing. One crazy thing about the performance, people were going on stage in the middle of the show to take pictures with the performers!! Yet another example of how the Chinese have no shame... that kind of behavior would be unacceptable in the United States. Family after family was taking their children onto stage to

stand by the singers, right in the middle of the performance! I was in disbelief! The awesome thing was that Adrienne went up there to pose with one of the singers too :)

After the show at the bonfire, I was really excited to see a big night sky full of stars!! To my disappointment, it was a cloudy night, so I didn't get to see a single star. However, there was a really bright moon that illuminated the clouds, so that was neat to see. We went to sleep later that night in our very own yurts! Yes, we stayed in yurts! haha it was really cool!

Caroline and I shared a yurt, and we woke up at 4:20 in the morning along with Hannah, Melissa, Kristi, and Gabby to see the sun rise. We walked for a good 45 minutes to the top of a hill. We watched the pink sky for a good hour, and we were about to turn back when the sun finally peeked out from behind the hills. A big orange globe! We watched it rise from behind the hills, and once it appeared, it rose so quickly! haha it reminded me of the opening scene in the Lion King. When I looked back at pictures, the sky is a beautiful pink and orange with the circular sun right at the horizon. The grasslands are darkened, and when I flip the photos upside down, it looks like the pictures are taken from space!

Oh one fun thing about Inner Mongolia was that we were the only white people there, and the Mongolians were FASCINATED with us! We got our pictures taken so many times, with and without our permission. Depending on what mood I was in, it was either really fun or really annoying to be watched. In the end, I liked it when people would ask me to take my picture instead of just plain snapping one of me when I'm eating dinner.

After the sunrise, we ate breakfast and then got back on the bus for a five hour ride to the Gobi Desert!! On the way, we stopped in the city of Baotan for lunch. Baotan is the second cleanest city in China! The section of the desert that we visited was called the Resonant Sand Gorge, and it had been turned into somewhat of a mini theme park. We took a cable chair ride (or snow ski lift) from the parking lot over to the dunes. When we arrived on the dunes, there was just desert everywhere, stretching in all directions! How cool! The dunes were gorgeous, and I liked how the wind had created ripples across the sand like the waves do to the ocean bottom.

We went on a camel ride, which was so fun! All of our camels were tied together in a line, so we looked like a nice train of camels traipsing across the desert. My camel was beautiful and white and so soft! We sat between the two humps, and it was very comfortable. We got on the camels went they were sitting on the ground, and it was like a roller coaster when the whole line of camels stood up! During our camel ride, there was some lightening in the distance, and then we started to hear thunder, and then it started RAINING in the desert! INSANE! We had to stop and get off our camels in case they spooked. An ATV was driven out to our group to pick us up and take us back to the base camp. We piled 16 wet people into this ATV, and the driver was crazy! He raced across the dunes, bouncing us into the ceiling. The windows were all foggy, so none of us could see outside. There were times when I thought the car was going to roll over! Now THAT was like a roller coaster. It kind of reminded me of Jurassic Park.

After waiting out the storm, we took some sled rides down the side of a steep dune, in which we all got covered in sand from head to toe! We then took the cable chairs back to the bus and headed back to Hohhot. That night, we stayed in Jin Jiang Hotel in Hohhot. It was a FIVE STAR HOTEL!!! Obviously, it was the nicest hotel I have EVER stayed in! Wow, we were ballers in Mongolia! Caroline and I shared a room on the 16th floor, and it had two full size beds, with big fluffy comforters, and two fluffy pillows for each of us! There was also a sitting area with a glass topped desk and a big window overlooking the city. The bathroom was incredible! The shower was actually separated from the toilet! YES! There was also a bathtub, and they gave us complimentary shampoo AND conditioner AND lotion! There were even big soft white towels and BATH ROBES!!! I took the most amazingly warm shower, and then wrapped up in my robe. Caroline and I went over to Kristi and Jen's room where we were joined by Gabby and Sara for a robe party! hahaha :)

After our ballin night at the five star hotel, we ate an awesome breakfast. They had eggs and cereal and milk! I had some peach juice, and it was very tasty! They even had banana bread and it was so moist and yummy, so of course I had four pieces :) After breakfast, Susan took us to visit the Dazhao Lamasery, the Five Pagoda Temple, and the Zhaojun Tomb. The Dazhao Lamasery was a traditional Chinese Buddhist temple built in the same style as the temples in the Forbidden City. The Five Pagoda Temple was really pretty, and there were little buddhas along the walls that people had given little yi jiao coins. To get to the top of the pagoda, we climbed through a steep staircase in a small dark tunnel. Nice! At the Zhaojun Tomb, there was a museum about the Huns that included artifacts like swords, bowls, and armor from 200 B.C.! The Zhaojun Tomb was for one of the Hun Kings, and it was at the top of a hill, guarded by a pagoda of course!

After touring Hohhot, we had some time to spare, so we walked around a mall in the city, and Caroline and I bought some juice and relaxed in a nearby park, similar to Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. They had a big concrete amphitheater with a huge TV screen that was showing a soccer game. Caroline and I chilled on the stairs, and as we were sitting, people started wandering over and sitting near us. I guess they were interested in the white people. A homeless man came over to ask us for money, and two boys paid him and shooed him away from us. That was nice of them. Also at the park, there were these ponds, and floating on the water were these big, clear, hollow plastic balls. Inside the balls were CHILDREN! Yes! Like hamsters! Running around in the balls on the water! Crazy! It looked like fun, but something like that would never happen in the US.

Later that evening, we ate dinner and then Susan took us to the train station. We took a group photo in front of the bus (it was called the Golden Dragon). Then, we bid goodbye to Susan and our awesome bus driver, Mr. Li, who was one of the most animated people I've ever met, and he didn't speak a word of English! We took the K-Train home, and arrived in Beijing this morning at 7:30. The tour company picked us up from the station and took us back to campus in rush hour traffic. We even passed a six car accident where they had all run into each other's bumpers! We ended up making it to our 9:00 class just in time! What an awesome weekend!

Updated Links

Caroline and I are featured on GT's athletics website (www.ramblinwreck.com)!! We are submitting journal entries and pictures to them about our travels this summer! How fun! Check it out! A more detailed link is posted in the "Fun Links" column on the left of this page.

Also, I've posted some direct links to my photo albums since I cannot access my Photo Website in China. I am also not able to upload photos anymore due to Internet restrictions, so this is all I've got until I get back to the States in August. Enjoy!

Caroline and I went back to the pool today with our Teaching Assistant Ralph to be our translator. We passed our deep water test (YAY! 30 seconds of treading water and a 200 meter swim), and we got our updated swimming certificate. The people at the pool were FASCINATED by Caroline and I, it was crazy! We were watched the whole time, and people were giving us thumbs up. Ralph informed me that everyone was talking about us and that we looked like professionals. One guy even asked Caroline and I to do a lap of butterfly, and he said that the Tsinghua swim team is far behind us. haha.

I asked Ralph why so many of the Chinese go to the pool, and he said it's because they don't have air conditioning because it is too expensive. So they go to the pool during the day to cool off. Oh and the showers at the pool are COLD. No hot water. And the lap pool is nice, but it's dirty and murky. I'm afraid I'm going to get sick from swimming in the water, but swimming felt SO GOOD! I swam a 1500 (the pool closes at 5 and we get out of class at 4. It was 4:30 by the time we finished our swimming test). Swimming was tough, and I was definitely out of breath, partly because I haven't swam in a month and party because there is no oxygen in China.

Oh, and Caroline and I went back to the Silk Market after swimming, and one of the ladies asked if we were athletes. We said yes, and then she asked if we were swimmers, and she was so excited that she had guessed correctly!

One thing to note about China: there is no shame. Mothers breast feed their children on crowded subways, little children walk around with no pants or underwear on, and when a child has to go to the bathroom, the mother stops them right where they are and let's the child pee on the ground. Yes, I've seen my fair share of children peeing in the corner of a store or in the subway tunnels or even by the escalator. No wonder everybody was sitting on newspaper at the train station...

3rd Class Completed

I swam today!!!!!! In a real pool!!!! Well, kind of...

First, I took my final for my Manufacturing and Warehousing class. Let's just say... I'm not going to be in charge of a warehouse anytime soon...

After the final, I was REALLY wanting to swim. Swimming is a big stress reliever for me, and I just haven't been the same without it. So, Caroline and I hunted down the outdoor pool on campus. We managed to get a certificate to access the pool surprisingly easily. We just presented our ID card, a passport sized photo, and some cash, and they made our certificate on the spot!

There are two 50 meter, 8 lane pools! There is one that is three feet deep that has no lane ropes. It is used for playing. Caroline and I counted nearly 200 people in that pool today, but luckily the pool was big, so they were all spread out. The other pool is deeper and has lane ropes and BACKSTROKE FLAGS!!!! YAY! So of course we go over to the lap pool to swim, but we get stopped by the guard at the gate. A nice man translated for us, and apparently we had to have a deep water certificate. We have to pass a swimming test first, but they only administer the tests on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so sadly, we couldn't swim for real today.

Instead, we splashed around in the play pool, just enjoying being immersed in a body of water bigger than our showers. It felt so good to stretch out and feel the water again, and naturally we got stared at for being athletic American girls. It's always so awkward being watched. We swam across the pool to the other side, and when we finished, our friend had wandered over and informed us that we were professionals. Haha of course we are :) Our friend then joined us, and we taught him a little bit about swimming. He was so thankful, "What an opportunity! I am not worthy!" haha silly Asians. He asked where we were from, and when we told him Atlanta, Georgia, he said "Oh! The capital! A famous city!" He also pointed to his eye and told Caroline, "your... your... your eyeball is BLUE!" HAHAHAHAHA sooooo cute! He said that my eyes were yellow? What?

My comments about the pool: 

-The bathrooms were all squattys, and they did not have stall doors. Just basically squat in the middle of the locker room, out in the open... yeah.

-The women all wore one pieces and swim caps.

-The men walked around in swim suits that looked like boxer briefs, but they had them pulled up above their belly buttons!

-The men also like to stand around and smoke cigarettes by the pool. Sick.

-The pool has no chlorine in it.

-The pool bottom had so much dirt and algae on it that it was completely BLACK. I didn't even want to put my face in the water, and I tried so hard not to swallow any of it.

I'm taking my camera when I go to the pool tomorrow to document these strange events.

For dinner tonight, a group of ten of us went out to The Kro's Nest. It is a pizza place modeled after Fellini's in Atlanta, and it was started and is owned by a 24-year-old Georgia Tech graduate!!!! He has opened six more locations in Beijing, and his business is making a KILLING! He's a friend of one of the guys on the program, but unfortunately he was at a different location tonight. Nevertheless, the pizza was AMAZING! So delicious! It was pricey, and I was expecting small portions (like meal in China). Caroline and I decided to split a grilled chicken salad and a medium "Fresh Pizza" (mushrooms, green peppers, broccoli, tomatoes, cheese, black olives). I was shocked when this HUGE pizza was delivered to our table, along with the most gigantic salad that could have fed by entire family of five! It was ridiculous how much food we got, and it was all so tasty! It was definitely worth the price. Every single rumble.

Haha, as a side note: the currency in China is called Yuan or Renminbi, abbreviated RMB. Hence, we've been called the currency Rumbles. haha! David Schwartz also likes to call them Rumplestiltskins, and sometimes we use the term bones. Common lingo among our group is "How many bones did that cost you?" or "I just spent 10 rumplestiltskins!" or "I'm all out of rumbles...". If yuan is the equivalent of dollars in the US, then wu jiao is the equivalent of cents in the US. We like to call the wu jiao Rumblies, and I like calling them Little Ones, like "the bike parking costs two rumblies" or "I don't have any little ones." From hear on out, I will refer to Chinese yuan or RMB as Rumbles.

The Forbidden City and Pandas!

Blue skies exist in Beijing!!!!! Saturday morning, July 12! A perfectly blue sky!!!! I ran up to the highest floor in our dorm and took pictures out the windows. Our campus is surrounded by MOUNTAINS!!! I had no idea! This was the first time I had ever seen them! What a beautiful day! 

Since it was so pretty, Caroline, Gabby, and I tried to take the subway to the Olympic Green to take pictures with the Water Cube and the Bird's Nest, but the new subway lines aren't open yet. Uh oh, Beijing better step it up. The Olympics are in less than a month! So I attempted to flag down some taxis, but all six taxis that I asked didn't understand where we wanted to go. I was sad, but we're going to try again later in the week.

I decided to stay in Beijing this weekend because of school work. We have a group paper and presentation due on Monday, and our final is on Tuesday. But no worries, I still had plenty of fun this weekend :)

On Friday, I went with Caroline, Hannah, Kristi, Jen, Sara, Gabby, Zach, and Josh to the Forbidden City! The Forbidden City served as the imperial palace for the emperor and his court from the Ming dynasty beginning in 1406 until the Qing dynasty was overthrown by Sun Yat-Sen in 1911. The Forbidden City covers 720,000 square meters and consists of over 980 surviving buildings. It is surrounded by an eight-meter high wall and a 52-meter wide moat! How cool! 

The Forbidden City is basically a line of gates and halls that you walk through right down the center. There are outer halls and courts, but the main walkway in the center is where all of the big, beautiful, and important buildings are located. All of the ground in the city is laid with bricks, except for a white marble pathway running right through the center. Only the emperor was allowed to walk on this pathway, but of course, today anybody can step foot on it and take pictures in a place only the emperor was allowed to touch. 

All of the main buildings in the Forbidden City were uniform in design. They were all crimson red with gold arching roofs. There were blue, green, and gold painted beams across the ceilings. The roofs swooped outward, and at the curved end there were a number of beasts (little statues of lions, dragons, etc.). The number of beasts on the ends of the roofs were used to distinguish one building from another, like a ranking system. There are 11 main halls, and the Hall of Supreme Harmony is the biggest and grandest. Thus, it has all 11 beasts. The rest of the halls had 10, then 9, then 8, based on their size and importance. The beasts were also placed at the ends of the roofs to keep the tiles from sliding off! How interesting! 

I also liked all of the names of everything in the Forbidden City. The main theme was harmon between heaven and earth. We entered the Forbidden City through the Meridian Gate, and then passed through the Gate of Supreme Harmony that opens up into the big and wide-open Supreme Harmony Square. Across the Square, we could see the largest surviving wooden structure in China- the Hall of Supreme Harmony that was used to host ceremonies, such as the emperors' enthronement and imperial weddings. It is built above three levels of marble stone base, and it is surrounded by huge bronze basins. In fact, these bronze basins were all over the city! Since there was no running water in the city, the basins were kept filled with water in case there was a fire. 

Behind the Hall of Supreme Harmony is the Hall of Central Harmony, which was where the emperor could prepare for and rest during ceremonies, and the Hall of Preserving Harmony, which was used for rehearsing ceremonies. Beyond these halls is the Palace of Heavenly Purity where the emperor lived and the Palace of Earthly Tranquility where the empress lived. The emperor represented Yang (the heavens), and the empress represented Yin (the Earth). The Hall of Union was located between their two residences, and it was considered the place where Yang and Yin mixed to produce harmony.

Behind the residences is the Imperial Garden. The garden was huge, and there were so many people there! There were tall and arching trees, and many of their branches were being held up by tall wooden posts. There is a 10-meter high rick hill called the Hill of Accumulated Elegance toward the back of the garden, and at the top of the rock mountain lies the Pavilion of Imperial Scenery. Once a year during the Double Ninth festival, the emperor, his wife, and his concubines all climb the hill to the top to reach the pavilion. Also, an awesome translation of a sign in the Imperial garden: "A single act of carelessness leads to eternal loss of beauty." I think an easier translation would be "Please stay off of the flowers."

While we were in the Imperial Garden, some of the Chinese troops came into the garden and started clearing it out. We got pushed to the outer edges of the garden, and a local explained to us that we had to wait there for thirty minutes because there was a special visitor touring the Forbidden City. It turns out that the Mexican president was in Beijing because China and Mexico were in the process of signing a friendship agreement. A few minutes later, we got to watch the whole delegation from Mexico, and I assume that I saw the president, tour through the garden and take pictures. How awesome would you feel if you were able to clear out the entire Forbidden City when you went to see it? I was so pumped, and I wished the US President was there too. But then we realized that if the US President was in the Forbidden City, we definitely would not be allowed to be standing there watching.

After seeing as much of the Forbidden City as possible, we shopped around at the Olympic merchandise store at Tiananmen Square. It is becoming very difficult to find Olympic merchandise. None of the stores are restocking their inventory. For example, the Beijing 08 store on campus has run out of all size small T-shirts, and they are not ordering any more. So I've been searching for other stores that have small T-shirts in stock, and it seems that all of the stores are running out. This is becoming a problem, so every time that I see a Beijing 08 store, I run inside to check out what they have because I may never find it again in another store.

Oh, a side note: China (and Singapore too) do not practice the idea of quantity discounts. For example, I buy bottled water at the supermarket. Which would be cheaper, to buy 6 individual little bottles of water or to buy one gallon of water (and refill a water bottle)? In the US, of course buying the gallon would be cheaper than buying 6 individual bottles. This is not the case in China. Buying six small bottles of water is the same price as buying one gallon of the same volume. I don't understand. There are also no deals like buying one granola bar for 3 yuan, but buying a box of 6 bars for 15 yuan. Instead, China sells one granola bar for 3 yuan, and a box of six granola bars for 18 yuan. I suppose China is making more money that way, but it does not make the customer very happy.

On Saturday (our awesome blue sky day), Caroline, Gabby, and I went to the Silk Market and Pearl Market to do more shopping. I went back to the same Pearl lady that I had visited a few weeks before, and I bought so much from her that she gave each of us a free gold chain! I also bought a ridiculous number of purses and wallets, and I need to go back to the market to buy a suit case so I can bring all of my souvenirs and gifts home!

My group and I spent a good bit of Saturday night and Sunday morning working on our paper, and when we finished it, Kristi and I went to the Beijing Zoo to see the pandas!!! It was so worth it! The pandas were so incredibly adorable! I was afraid they would all be napping, but they were being really active! Some were climbing all over a playground structure that they had, and others were laying on their backs eating bamboo.  It was all so cute!

News from home:

-My friend Kathleen made the US Olympic Team for swimming!!!! She placed 2nd in the 200 Butterfly at US Olympic Trials! Right now she at the US swimming training camp in Palo Alto, California. Then the team moves on to train in Singapore (!!!!!) before arriving in Beijing at the start of the Olympics! It is so neat thinking about the things that Kathleen will get to do! She is not only a part of the USA Swim Team, but the USA Olympic Team, all of the sports! I wonder how much free stuff she is going to get and how many awesome people she is going to meet?? How amazing! I can't wait to see her on TV, especially at the opening ceremony!

-My teammate Onur Uras made the Turkey Olympic Team for swimming! He made his cut in the 100 fly, and his swim was so fast that it set a new Turkish National Record!! He's coming to Beijing, and hopefully Caroline and I will get to see him!

-Shout out to my brother Ben and his friend Garrett! They are both at Basic Cadet Training at the Air Force Academy right now. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers. USAFA Class of 2012: Never Falter, Never Fail!

Things I miss about home the most:

-My family: Tay, Ben, Mom, Dad, and my puppy

-My teammates!! I BELIEVE!!!!!!! 

-Twice-Baked Potatoes

-Being able to read a menu in a restaurant. Being able to read anything really

-Real bathrooms (with an actual toilet, toilet paper, soap, and paper towels)

-Blue skies and the sun

-The pool

-Drinking water from the tap

-Taking a shower whenever I want to

Things I will miss about China the most:

-Beijing 2008 Olympics!!

-Being taller than everybody else

-Being an American. The Chinese LOVE taking pictures of Americans!

-Meeting 28 awesome GT students and sharing once-in-a-lifetime experiences with them

-The Great Wall of China

-Public transportation

-Cheap food, an entire meal for 75 cents!

The next two days are going to be jam packed with school work, but after our final on Tuesday, we will get out and have some fun. I am planning on visiting the Olympic Green and seeing the venues. We are also trying to buy tickets to an acrobat show, and of course I will return to the Silk Market. This weekend, we have a four night trip planned to Inner Mongolia!! We will ride horses across the grasslands just like the Mongols, ride camels through the Gobi Desert, sleep in yurts (similar to Native American tipis), learn all about Genghis Khan, and see stars for the first time all summer!

However, as it is written, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him." 

1 Corinthians 2:9